Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Dmitry Bashkatov <me@×××××××.name>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-dev] Add more local USE flags
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:40:14
Message-Id: 2eec58371003180539p301c1ef2h5af9b137771091f3@mail.gmail.com
1 Hello, gentoo devs! I have a little story about USE flags.
2 Almost every package in gentoo has USE flags. Many of them have clear
3 meaning. For example: <doc> builds package documentation, <qt> or
4 <gtk> build GUI frontend. Meaning of this flags is one for all
5 packages in portage. And this is described in use.desc file. But there
6 are many USE flags with fuzzy meaning. For example <java> USE flag of
7 package net-print/cups. What does it mean? Description file says "java
8 - Adds support for Java". But what kind of support is it? Build Java
9 bindings or build some optional tools written on Java? <python> flag —
10 "Adds support/bindings for the Python language" also doesn't asks on
11 my question about kind of support. Only ways to find out answer are
12 read ebuild and "./configure --help" or use other sources of
13 information like google. But this takes time. Very very many time when
14 installing system first time. Also this work already done by package
15 maintainer and there is no reason to repeat this for every user.
16
17 My suggestion is to take out all this per package USE flag vagueness
18 to use.local.desc file, so you can use
19 $ equery uses net-print/cups
20 + + java   : build java printing web-application
21 + + python : build python bindings to libcups
22 This is only example, I really don't know what this flags mean here. =)
23 Another my suggestion is to extend ebuild format so package maintainer
24 can easily add use flag description.
25
26 What can you say about this? May be this is my delirium? And may be
27 only my gentooic brain need this sort of information about USE flags.

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] Add more local USE flags Samuli Suominen <ssuominen@g.o>